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Reusable metal water bottles are popping up for sale all over the place these days. At the Go Green Festival in New York City last April, I spotted a stainless steel bottle for $27. At local grocery stores I’ve seen metal bottles for just $10. Custom logoed bottles can cost anywhere between $3.00 and $13.00. So what’s the difference? It turns out, plenty.
I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying: you get what you pay for. There are some serious quality issues with the cheap metal bottles – we know because we tested lots of them in the process of choosing a bottle for Back2Tap. We encountered leaking caps, paint that literally peeled off after a few weeks, logos that were printed poorly and faded quickly, thin walls that dented very easily, and poor polishing/finishing on the bottle.
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- Paint peeling off a cheap bottle.
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- Comparison of damage caused by dropping onto pavement when full.
Then there’s the question of what the bottles are made of – a cheap bottle may not be made of food grade materials. If you choose stainless steel rather than aluminum, you won’t have to worry about a cheap liner that may allow unwanted constituents to leach into your beverage. Back2Tap bottles are 0.5mm thick, printed with safe and resilient paints in the USA, and are tested to ensure that they comply with FDA and ASTM standards.
An acquaintance of mine sheepishly admitted to me recently that she had supplied her whole swim team with cheap stainless steel bottles last winter, and now regrets it. The bottles are so junky no one wants to use them anymore! At the Watchung Hills Green Day event in October, a customer who bought a blank bottle at our exhibit table admitted that she had just purchased a cheaper bottle at another table. She bought it solely to support the soccer team even though she knew she would never actually use such a poor quality product.
These two stories highlight the main reason Back2Tap doesn’t offer cheap bottles – and we have considered doing so, believe me! Plenty of suppliers have contacted us hawking their wares. Low quality bottles just don’t perform well and don’t last so they are not durable and useful, key requirements for sustainable products. Back2Tap doesn’t want to be fostering a throw away mentality by selling cheap bottles because that is exactly what we are trying to combat. We hope that schools selling Back2Tap bottles for a fundraiser do so with the understanding that they are promoting sustainability and environmental stewardship as well as raising funds.
In sum, there are numerous significant differences between cheap, low quality bottles and better more expensive bottles. If you buy an inferior bottle that doesn’t last or doesn’t get used, your effort to be “greener” or live more sustainably will have failed – so don’t even bother! A good reusable bottle can save you hundreds of dollars over its lifetime so it is worth investing in a high quality bottle that you will enjoy using every day.
Last June, math teacher and director of sustainability Kevin Merges arranged for the seniors at Rutgers Preparatory School in Somerset, New Jersey to get a surprise under their chairs at
Sustainable Future bottles.
their graduation ceremony. Seniors quenched their thirst from reusable bottles filled with tap water instead of bottled water during the ceremony. Merges noticed in prior years that dozens of water bottles were only partially empty. Mary Ganzenmuller, Vice President of the Board of Trustee worked with Merges to find this sustainable solution for the event. Provided by Back2Tap, the stainless steel bottles were customized with the school logo and the words: Rutgers Preparatory School – A Sustainable Future. According to Merges, the students were thrilled with their reusable bottles and plan to carry them proudly as they go forth toward their sustainable futures.
Seniors with their reusable bottles.Sustainable Future bottles.
It always feels good when a Back2Tap campaign at a school goes right. I was so psyched to hear that the reusable bottles and bottle-less water coolers were well received by the K-12 students at Lincoln – Hubbard School in Summit, NJ. So well, in fact, the students are lining up in the hallway to fill up their custom reusable bottles from Back2Tap. The kids say that they love the tap water because it is so cold and refreshing.
students refilling their reusable water bottles
Bottle-less coolers are tied directly into the water line and provide cold, filtered tap water without the waste, expense and exposure to plastics found with traditional water coolers with the 5 gallon jugs that have to be delivered. Although Back2Tap does not sell bottle-less water coolers, we can recommend a manufacturer. Lincoln – Hubbard was able to use the profits from their stainless steel bottle fundraiser toward the purchase of the coolers. Best of all, this is one green initiative that will save the school money and the parents money while benefitting students health and ability to learn.
It was a true pleasure to get a phone call from Susan Murray, parent and owner of Waste Not Solutions of Little Silver, NJ. She described a community that wanted to take a proactive step and invest some of its precious Environmental Commission dollars in the community’s children and schools.
Led by Rosemary Brewer, the Little Silver Environmental Commission graciously donated 1000 custom, stainless steel water bottles to the students and staff at Point Road and Markham Place schools in New Jersey. The commission’s goal was to help students reduce the number of disposable plastic water bottles they use and to make a positive impact on the environment.
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- Students enjoying Back2Tap reusable bottles
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- Check out our cool bottles!
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- Back2Tap reusable stainless steel bottles
The school created additional enthusiasm for the program by holding a logo design contest for the students. The winner was rewarded with their logo on the schools’ bottles. The result is a fantastic graphic. Bravo Little Silver!
Back2Tap reusable steel bottles
Back2Tap reusable stainless steel bottles
- A soccer player with one of our bottles
Did you know that Americans each drank an average of 218 bottles of water in 2007? bottles – 66 billion, in fact! Only 23% of them are recycled so on a daily basis, a staggering 140 million disposable plastic bottles go to landfills in the USA. That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach from New Jersey to China and back every day.
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- A soccer player with one of our bottles
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- bottled water bottles laid end to end from Xhina to the US
It doesn’t take an engineering degree to understand that this is a problem. It is extremely wasteful. To begin with, finite natural resources like water and oil are being consumed in the manufacturing of bottled water. It takes 4 ounces of oil and 51 ounces of water to make one 17 ounce bottle of water! Then after their use, 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles are dumped in landfills each year where they will take over 700 years to decompose.
There is a simple solution to this problem. Drink tap water instead of bottled water and use a reusable bottle when you are on-the-go. Even if you filter and flavor your tap water, you will save money because bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water. There are many reusable bottles on the market today. For a high performance, high quality water bottle, try a stainless steel bottle from Back2Tap.
When the Patriots Path Council called to invite Back2Tap to their Jamboree celebrating 100 years of Boy Scouts, I didn’t really know what to expect. Preparing for the “jambo,” I began to wonder whether any boys would visit a table presenting the evils of bottled water when they could be spear throwing, mountain boarding, bullwhip cracking, or watching an army tank run over a car.
In spite of having about 175 cool activities to choose from, a couple hundred of the 4300 scouts and leaders did find time to spend at the Back2Tap table this past Saturday. Every single boy and leader listened intently, asked questions, and seemed genuinely excited about our campaign for getting back to drinking tap water and using reusable bottles. This was definitely the best crowd I’ve ever worked with as an exhibitor. I also learned a lot – from the challenges of having private well water to the best type of carabiner.
Interestingly, even these outdoorsy community-minded folks who had reusable bottles clipped to their belts weren’t familiar with the astounding facts about bottled water waste. Many of them told us that if people knew about the:
• 140 million disposable bottles going to landfills everyday,
• 700 years it takes for plastic to decompose,
• 4 ounces of oil it takes to make each disposable bottle,
• 1000 times greater cost of bottled water, and
• more stringent regulatory oversight of tap water compared to bottled water,
they would be persuaded to drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water. Most people just don’t know about the hidden costs of their consumer choices. To illustrate these impacts, we had a sequencing activity where scouts put the 18 steps in the Life Cycle of a Disposable Plastic Water Bottle in order (see photo). Impacts on the environment were obvious at many steps in the Life Cycle. Before leaving, they were also able to take our Bottled Water IQ Test to see how much they had learned.
Obviously, there is a lot more work to do getting these facts and concepts out to people. Most of the scouts and scout leaders left our exhibit table eager to spread the Back2Tap message with the rest of their troop and with their communities. This is exactly the type of help the Back2Tap movement needs because it is not a message that large multi-national corporations with large advertising budgets is going to sponsor. It will take community leaders like scouts, teachers, PTO members, municipal volunteers, and green activists spreading the word, community by community. To find out how to help foster the Back2Tap movement, visit our community page.
Congratulations to the Patriots Path Council and the participating scout troops for organizing such an exciting and inspiring event. It was an honor to meet and talk with so many of you – thank you for sharing your opinions and suggestions with Back2Tap.
You can keep it simple and cheap. Forget all the powders, potions, and bottles of expensive sports drinks for your kids. Just send your children off to school and sports with plain old tap water in reusable stainless steel water bottles. According to Phys Ed: Are Sports Drinks Actually Good for Kids?, unless children will be exercising vigorously for more than 90 minutes, water is better for them. And outside of exercise, sports drinks are not a good choice – they are just expensive sugar water.
Most sports drinks don’t even come close to replacing the electrolytes you lose when you sweat a lot, so they aren’t doing what you think they are doing. If they had enough salt in them, you wouldn’t want to drink them!
For older children (10-12 and up) who are exercising hard for more than 90 minutes, dehydration is a concern and sports drinks are appropriate. Studies have shown that young athletes do drink significantly more water when it is flavored and almost twice as much when it contains electrolytes and carbohydrates, like a sports drink.
If you want to be green and frugal, check out this DIY sports drink recipe made with your very own tap water from “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook,” 4th Edition:
Sports drink recipe from “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook”
1/4 cup sugar (or stevia powder to be really healthy!)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup hot water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 1/2 cups cold waterIn a quart pitcher, dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water. Add the remaining ingredients and the cold water. The drink contains about 50 calories and 110 mg of sodium per 8 ounces, approximately the same as for most sports drinks (unless you substituted stevia powder for the sugar).
So be green, be frugal, and be healthy, fill your reusable bottles with tap water, flavored if serious exercise awaits!
This is just wrong!
Many school fountains are in a state of disrepair.
During our 2007 Back2Tap reusable bottle campaign in our school district, we toured several of our schools to investigate the status of the school water fountains. It was shocking to find out that there is no access to tap water in some lunch rooms and numerous old water fountains in the hallways had been disabled. The perception seemed to be that they didn’t need to be fixed because students could rely on bottled water. Also, the school district makes money by selling bottled water in the cafeteria.
These images are from a Polaris Institute report on water fountains in Canadian universities: Campus Water Fountains: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but they could have been from just about any US school district.
We did a beverage survey and found out that 80% of the bottled water being consumed was coming from home. The school district didn’t stand to lose very much revenue if bottled water sales dropped, and parents stood to save money by not having to purchase bottled water. Two of our district schools were thrilled to use the funds raised by our stainless steel bottle fundraiser to purchase and install three school water coolers. Two other schools are likely to follow suit.
Back2Tap is working to replicate this model in other school districts by helping schools sell reusable stainless steel water bottles to raise money for point-of-use water coolers in school cafeterias and hallways. This is one good way to combat the trend toward limited access to drinking water in our communities.
When I first started my search for the best reusable bottle for our school fundraiser in the fall of 2007, I came across warnings about a variety of chemicals that could leach out of various types of bottles into drinks. Some claims seemed far fetched – especially the one about plastic bottles that are put in the freezer, but some claims seemed legitimate. Digging a little deeper, I found credible scientific sources who concluded that Bisphenol A (BPA) can leach out of plastic and is not a good chemical to ingest, even in small concentrations. BPA is a hormone disruptor that can affect the reproductive system and the nervous system, especially in children and infants. I quickly ruled out any plastic bottle that contained BPA – at the time, all Nalgene and Camelback bottles.
After eliminating the hard plastic (polycarbonate) bottles to avoid BPA, I considered the metal bottles: aluminum and stainless steel. Aluminum bottles have to be lined with something because aluminum is reactive. We steered away from Sigg because their bottles had openings too narrow for ice cubes and proper washing and drying. But we were also concerned about that liner. What was it made of? Would it wear and crack with use or abuse? Little did I imagine that Sigg’s aluminum bottles actually contained BPA and they were keeping that information from consumers while the BPA concern was growing! Ultimately, we chose stainless steel because it’s non-reactive and doesn’t need a liner. Stainless steel has also been around for decades and hasn’t been found to leach anything harmful into drinks.
Fast forward to 2009 - some reusable bottle companies have come up with a new type of hard plastic that doesn’t contain BPA and Sigg can now line their bottles with a liner that doesn’t have BPA, but you know what? I’m not sure I am willing to trust that this new plastic bottle and new liner are any better and that the companies would admit it if they weren’t better. Given Sigg’s years of misinformation about BPA, I’m just not sure anymore, so I’m sticking with stainless steel reusable bottles! Naturally, BPA-free!
It is commonly believed that most disposable plastic water bottles are recycled and reused. In fact, close to 80% of used water bottles end up in the trash that piles up in our landfills. By switching from bottled water to tap water, we can help reduce the number of plastic bottles that get tossed into the trash. On average, there are 137 million plastic bottles that get thrown into the trash every day. That is enough, laid end to end to reach China and back.
Back2Tap makes it easier to turn away from bottled water with their stainless steel reusable water bottles. Consider the number of water bottles that you have used in your life until this point. Now consider how many more water bottles you have the potential to use throughout the rest of your life. With the help of a stainless steel reusable water bottle, you can eliminate 100% of your future disposable plastic water bottle usage and do your part in helping rid the environment of the millions of plastic bottles that are dumped in our landfills every day.
